Kata, Crises, and Michael Lombard’s Innovative AME Conference Keynote

My guest for Episode #388 is my friend Michael Lombard. I first met Michael when he lived in the DFW area and first got into healthcare. He has been a Lean facilitator / coach in numerous healthcare organizations and has been a hospital CEO in Louisiana before taking his current role, again focusing on process improvement, at Kaiser Permanente in California.

Michael is doing a unique and, I think, groundbreaking keynote talk at the upcoming AME Virtual Conference. The session, which he invited me to moderate, is called:

“Striving together in a crisis: How improvement science can build resiliency in a crisis and perhaps even progress complex social issues.”

These crises include Covid-19, wildfires, and social injustice and unrest.

He will be joined by two physicians, Dr. Rita Ng and Dr. Carla Wicks and they will both be participating in the Q&A for this “conversation-style” keynote. Our podcast today is a preview of this session.

Michael and I also talk about how (and why) he got into healthcare and why the Toyota Kata methodology is so important to him.

I hope you enjoy the conversation like I did. You can listen to the audio or watch the video, below.

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Streaming Audio Player:

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Video of the Episode:

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For a link to this episode, refer people to www.leanblog.org/388.

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Webinars by Michael Lombard:

Michael's KaiNexus webinar on Lean management systems:

And his webinar on Kata:

Thanks for listening or watching!

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Let’s work together to build a culture of continuous improvement and psychological safety. If you're a leader looking to create lasting change—not just projects—I help organizations:

• Engage people at all levels in sustainable improvement
• Shift from fear of mistakes to learning from them
• Apply Lean thinking in practical, people-centered ways

Interested in coaching or a keynote talk? Let’s start a conversation.